This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss running 404 Media for a whole year, public speaking, and meetings.
SAM: I keep thinking “when I have time, I’ll write down some coherent thoughts about the last year” and then I never have time, or when I do have time I’m trying to smooth my brain out, not type more about work. The reality is, I will never actually sit down and reflect, short of what I do once a week in this venue, which is how we do things around here: write, publish, and keep it pushing. The guys will go into this more in their own entries today.
Something I do occasionally ponder for more than a few hurried minutes once a week is how we couldn’t have done any of this without a lot of help. From the outside, I’m sure it seems like we’re four people running a pretty decent website and that’s all there is to it. But in the first few months of launching, we relied very heavily on our networks—former Vice colleagues, old friends from past jobs, other indie media publications who paved the way—to help us get set up in the least chaotic way possible. There are a handful of these people listed in our anniversary post, but that’s an incomplete list. Many more lent their time and skills to us in a way we’ll never be able to repay. In coverage of 404’s launch, monetary questions always come up—what did we each invest in the company? What did it cost to start? What does it cost to keep it running? It’s felt impossible to put a real value on what it “costs” to start something like this. It costs an infinite number of billable hours from talented and benevolent friends who wanted to see us succeed and said “fuck it, I’ll do this for you” pro-bono or on the cheap.